HR for Health x Gusto Embedded Payroll
When HR for Health decided to embed payroll directly into their platform — powered by Gusto — they needed more than an announcement. They needed a full go-to-market launch across three distinct customer segments, a coordinated internal enablement program, and a content engine capable of sustaining momentum well past launch day.
As Product Marketing Manager, I led the entire launch end to end. That meant flying to San Francisco to meet with Gusto's embedded payroll team in person, co-developing the messaging and positioning framework, and returning to build out everything from email sequences and in-app messaging to webinars, social campaigns, a press release, and a 43-page internal GTM playbook the sales and customer experience teams used from day one.
This was a complex launch. It wasn't just "here's a new feature." It required moving existing customers off a legacy payroll provider, convincing others to add payroll to a platform they'd never used it on, and simultaneously generating demand from prospects who had no relationship with HR for Health at all. Each audience needed a different message, a different tone, and a different sequence — and all of it had to ship at once.
The foundation of the launch was the messaging architecture. Working directly with Gusto's embedded team — who were genuinely collaborative partners, not just a vendor — I built out a full positioning framework covering six distinct personas: single-location practice owners, multi-location HR managers, current clients without payroll, clients migrating from Gusto directly, clients migrating from the legacy provider (Asure), and former HR for Health clients. Each had different concerns, different objections, and different reasons to care.
One of the most important decisions early on was language. HR for Health wasn't "integrating" with Gusto — the payroll was embedded, meaning clients never had to leave the platform. That distinction mattered for trust, for positioning against competitors, and for how the sales team talked about the product. I codified that in the internal playbook, including a "never say integrated" rule with clear guidance on what to say instead.
From that foundation, I built out every customer-facing workstream:
Email marketing: Three segmented launch email sequences — one for general prospects, one for clients migrating from Asure, and one for existing clients being upsold — each with its own subject line, value proposition, and CTA. Those were followed by a multi-week drip calendar running through May, timed to webinar promos, follow-up nudges, and feature education.
In-app messaging via Pendo: A full timeline of in-app announcements triggered by customer behavior — launch day announcements, post-launch tips, upsell prompts for clients still running payroll elsewhere, and progressive nudges for clients in the migration queue. Each touchpoint was written for a specific moment in the customer journey.
Webinars: Four total. The launch webinar on April 11th was a live product debut covering the why, the demo, and the migration path — with an expert panel and live Q&A. Two additional webinars followed for prospects who missed the launch or needed more information. A fourth, customer-exclusive session was designed specifically for clients who felt hesitant about migrating — a space to ask questions openly and get answers from the team directly.
Social media and blog: A full content calendar supporting the launch across channels, with posts designed to build awareness before launch day and sustain engagement after it.
Press release and flyer: A formal press release announcing the partnership, and a digital and print flyer for events and direct outreach — both written to reflect the embedded (not integrated) positioning.
Sales and CX enablement: The GTM playbook itself, which covered messaging, competitive comparisons, a payroll battlecard, a PEO battlecard, demo checklists for both customer-facing and internal demos, pricing guidance, objection handling frameworks (ARC, APP, Negative Reverse Selling), and an internal language guide. I also coordinated with the Gusto team to bring their sales training resources into our internal toolkit.
A lot of product launches treat "customers" and "prospects" as two buckets and write two versions of the same message. This one required genuinely different strategies for each group, because the emotional stakes were different.
For customers being migrated, the job was reassurance. Change anxiety is real, especially for small practice owners who've been burned before. The messaging leaned into the support experience, the managed migration process, and the fact that their HR for Health team — people they already trusted — was handling the transition. The customer-exclusive webinar wasn't a sales event; it was a trust event.
For existing clients without payroll, the job was making the value obvious. They already used the platform daily. The message was simple: the thing you're doing in a separate system can now happen here, without the tab-switching, without the data exports, without the errors. The Pendo messaging was especially important for this group because it met them in the moment — right when they were already using the product.
For net-new prospects, the job was differentiation. Healthcare-specific payroll isn't a crowded space, but the trust bar is high. The messaging focused on the embedded experience, the transparent pricing, and the industry expertise of the support team — proof points that generic payroll providers couldn't match.
What made the partnership with Gusto's embedded team so valuable was how early we involved them. Going to San Francisco wasn't a formality — it was where the real positioning decisions got made. Because their product was still relatively new, they were genuinely open to building around our audience's needs, and that collaborative relationship showed up in everything we produced.
The GTM playbook was the artifact that held all of it together. By the time we launched, every person on the sales and customer experience team had a single source of truth: the messaging, the objections, the competitive context, the demo flow, the language guide. A launch is only as strong as the team behind it, and that document was how I made sure everyone was ready.
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